Over the last ten years, Zimoun has mastered the art of small motorized systems, that he has associated with objects made from raw material, often taken from everyday life or the industrial world, like cardboard or wood. With this background he created a lot of installation, “sound sculptures” or “sound architectures” showed in Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America. Now Zimoun is taken over the CENTQUATRE’s spaces in Paris with his sound sculptures for his largest exhibition yet.
“I am generally interested in simplicity, and in a complexity which is growing out of this simplicity” said the artist. So starting from raw material and small modules repeated until fitting the space Zimoun immerses us in singular visual and sound architectures.
On one hand the simplicity of the material and the units that create the architectures, on the other hand the complexity that arises from adding these simple elements. The work explores the mechanical rhythm and flow of prepared systems. Both sonically and visually, units of pulsing activity form the basis of the compositions, whose timing and contours are determined site-specifically. Each room of the exhibition contains one work based on one system.
A new creation is the work “49 prepared concrete mixers, 2017”. For the first time Zimoun works with systems that are machines directly taken from an industrial context. There are 49 concrete mixers gathered together in the Halle Aubervilliers. Each mixers contains various small materials producing specific sounds.
600 prepared dc-motors, 58kg wood, Zimoun 2017
Installation view: Le Centquatre Paris, France.
150 dc-motors filler wire 1.0 m, Zimoun 2010